


(A Question of) Divine Intervention

by Pallanwen



Category: B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin, Einstürzende Neubauten, Good Omens (TV), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Genre: Alcohol, Berlin (City), Crossover, Drug Use, Hausbesetzer, Herr Lehmann references, M/M, Magical Realism, Musicians, Mutual Pining, Nightlife, Recreational Drug Use, Sex Drugs & Industrial, Slow Burn, Songwriting, West-Berlin, Wings of Desire references, every West-Berlin cliché under the sun, political protests, various cameos by various musicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pallanwen/pseuds/Pallanwen
Summary: The year is 1983. Strange creatures are roaming the streets and squatted houses of West-Berlin: angels, demons, Australian junkies and German industrial musicians. Some of them need a bit of ...meddling to realize that they are falling in love.
Relationships: Blixa Bargeld/Nick Cave
Comments: 29
Kudos: 18





	1. ...Standing by the Wall

There is a big grey city with a Wall running through it. Not an ordinary wall, but a Wall with a capital W. There’s barbed wire and sentry towers full of soldiers with guard dogs and guns and no qualms about using them should anybody be bold enough to cross from the east into the west. It’s a city erected on barren sand, on Prussian discipline and the urge for military expansion. It was built on a foundation of war and the thirst for power – and now it’s paying the price. 

But from the rubble and debris of two world wars strange flowers are growing ...

[...]

There‘s a young man with a shock of jet-black hair lying in an alleyway just a few streets away from the western side of the Wall. He’s unconscious and it's hard to see if he is in fact still breathing. The crooks of his arms are covered in tell-tale bruises.

An angel and a demon are watching him from a nearby bus stop.   
  
"I‘m afraid he’s one of mine," says Crowley. "I remember him from a temptation I had to do on Hastur's behalf. But that was almost a decade ago. On the other side of the world. Australia."

He smiles wistfully, because he rather likes Australia. All these snakes and interesting spiders - even the fish are full of poison and sinister intentions. Not to mention the desert climate and the very recent addition of the ozone hole. If it weren’t for the koalas – clearly creations of the Other Side – Australia would be Hell‘s flagship continent.

"But it was so _typical_!" Crowley rolls his eyes. "It was almost boring. Corrupting a talented young artist – that's right up Hastur's alley. I would have settled for something more ... modern, but he didn't let me. To him, tempting pretty young poets with poppy-based drugs is still all the rage." 

He shrugs. "You have to admit, for someone with a 14th-century mindset, a trope from the 19th is almost ... avant-garde!"

"Wait, that was one of yours?"

Aziraphale hasn't been listening with full attention. Secretly, he has been holding out for signs of life from the inanimate body on the ground. He’s hoping very much that the faint noise tugging at the edge of his perception is a heartbeat or an echo of flat breathing.

But now he’s directing his attention away from the body (whose life signs instantly become fainter) and towards his demon adversary-slash-longstanding-companion.

"I know him, too!" he exclaims. "He was assigned to me even earlier. Back in Australia."

He wrinkles his nose. Australia has been a rather bad idea in the general scheme of things. So much desert! All these creatures with stings and prongs and teeth equipped to kill – or at least disembody – you in the most unpleasant way possible! And it had all taken a turn for the worse when the few human tribes, who had learned to cope with these hardships through stories and dreams and songs, had been slaughtered by a band of convicts, who brought atrocities like measles and beer and rugby. Besides, during all those centuries he has never been able to find a good restaurant in Australia.

But now Aziraphale remembers the last task that lead him to that dreadful continent:

"Two decades ago, I convinced this nice young boy from rural Victoria to join the church choir. I nudged his father to read him poetry – Yeats and Tennyson and W.H. Auden. And I gave the boy courage when he asked his friend from school if he wanted to start a band." 

Aziraphale hums a little melody under his breath. "I somewhat lost track of them afterwards, but those were some catchy melodies. 'The Boys Next Door' they were called."

Crowley laughs. "Well ... When I met him, he was screaming his lungs out and beat up other blokes on stage. A clear win for our side."

He looks towards the lifeless figure on the floor. A soft drizzle has set in, reflecting the street lights on the cobblestones, soaking the young man's cheap black suit. The broken windows of the still-ruined house behind him are like black eyes, observing the scenery without compassion.

"He'll catch his death out here!" Aziraphale says. 

Crowley frowns. "If he's still alive, that is." 

He rises from the bench they've been sitting on and walks into the rain. Lifting his sunglasses, he bends down to inspect the unconscious figure. 

"However he got here from Australia, I'm afraid Hastur's temptation did a rather thorough job. There's _a lot_ of drugs in his bloodstream."

Aziraphale sighs, his eyes clouded by compassion. "I wish we could do something. But you know how it's like. The protocol. The paperwork and everything. We're allowed to tempt and nudge, but we can't _meddle_."

"If nobody meddles, he won't live to see the sunrise."

"Isn't there anything that can be done? Someone else to take care of him?" Aziraphale knows he's grasping at straws. He can feel the human's life energy fleeing his body as they speak.

He isn't the only angel in Berlin, he knows that. There are others: sad and somber German angels in dark coats, invisible to mortal eyes. But they are even less allowed to interfere than him and Crowley. And from what Aziraphale knows, random drugged out Australians don't fall within their remit.

"He‘s your responsibility!" He elbows Crowley in the side. "_You_ did this to him!"

Crowley twists his body out of the angel's elbow range. 

"Well ... As I said, the drugs weren't exactly _my_ idea. I was the one who encouraged him to paint a large canvas with penises in art school and I miiight have convinced him that shoplifting was a cool thing to do. But I’m not responsible for this!"

"But I‘m not either! I was sent out to _prevent_ things like this!"

Crowley crouches down next to the unconscious youth. He reaches out to brush the hair from the high forehead and sighs. Then he looks towards Aziraphale who has been approaching slowly, staring at the body as if it was a dog that might jump at him any moment.

There's a yellow glint from Crowley. "You know ... It's not really meddling if there's nobody to witness it, don't you think? I'd rather be calling it ... taking responsibility. The rain is very cold and the streets are very empty. There's not a soul to be seen...." 

He gestures Aziraphale to come closer. The angel doesn't protest.

"It would need a _miracle_ to save him now..."

[...]

  
The rain patters on the pothole-ridden asphalt of the Kreuzberg streets. Pale street lights cast their eerie shine across the deserted cityscape, half of the buildings still in ruins from a war forty years in the past. Somewhere, a church bell tolls midnight.

An angel and a demon walk side by side towards Oranienstraße. The light from the Turkish takeaways casts neon reflections on Crowley's sunglasses.

  
[...]

Back in the alleyway, a figure in black remains spread-eagled on the pavement. The last stroke of the clock fades into the rainy Berlin night. There's a cough, a choked, drawn-out moan. Long limbs are twitching and an Australian voice is swearing in a way that would have made Aziraphale blush and Crowley take notes for future reference. Then the young man in the black suit sits up, rubs his forehead and finally, leaning for support on the pocked wall of the building to his right, struggles back onto his feet.

He coughs one last time, pats his pockets for his lighter, cigarettes and wallet (all there, even the few _deutschmark_ notes he has to his name – Aziraphale does not do miracles by halves), sighs and lights a cigarette with shaking fingers. 

Then he starts walking, still slightly unsteady on his feet, but gaining momentum with every step. There's a _u-bahn_ station not far away, the blue sign a beacon of light in the bleak night.

The man in black coughs once again, flicks his cigarette butt on the pavement and starts to climb the stairs towards Kottbusser Tor station. From a distance, Crowley and Aziraphale are watching until the train arrives and he vanishes from sight.


	2. Kaltes klares Wasser

It's Nick's second night at _Risiko_ and he is dreadfully drunk. He can't find Christoph, Mark or Gudrun, or anybody else of his new Berlin friends. And there's all kinds of funny stuff running through his veins – various chemicals mixed with the pulsing words of his half-finished novel. The world has transformed into a swirl of amorphous forms and flickering colours that is making his head throb and his throat tight with nausea.

It doesn't help that the tightly packed crowd in the bar near Yorckbrücken feels an inch away from suffocating him. The motley band of eccentric but well-meaning Berliners Christoph introduced him to seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving him with a crowd of abrasive strangers who don't speak his language. 

Surrounded by harsh syllables of unintelligible German, Nick gasps, leans on denim- and leather-clad shoulders around him, doing his best not to keel over by sheer drugged-induced exhaustion.

"Excuse me, my dear, you look like you could use a glass of water!"

The voice comes from somewhere over his left shoulder. A British voice, very posh, very articulated in a way he'd expect in an English seaside town, an Oxbridge library or a London gentlemen's club – but not here, not in the middle of West-Berlin's seediest bar.

Nick turns around to face the stranger. 

The guy looks exactly like you'd have expected from the voice: Soft round face, bright blue eyes, angelic curls, tweedy clothes straight from the 1950s. And a whiff of eau de toilette that for some miraculous reason doesn't get swallowed by the stench of beer, sweat and cigarettes that permeates _Risiko_ even during the better hours of the day and has now reached almost palpable thickness.

_A poof, of course._

The stranger smiles at him as if he is an old friend – Nick has never met him before.

"Look, mate, thanks, but I don't need..."

The stranger's smile becomes even more cheerful. 

"Drink some water, it'll do you good, I promise!"

Nick has no idea how it has happened. It's physically impossible with the crowd squeezing into the narrow tunnel of the bar room, particularly the two tall New Wavers separating him from the strange man in beige tweed (_Beige! Who wears beige in Risiko?_). But suddenly there's a glass of water in his hand. It's cool and sparkly and already refreshing just resting in his fingers, glittering in the dim lamp light like the nectar of the gods – and holy fucking hell, does it have a slice of _lemon_ in it?

"Th... thank you!" Nick says – but when he looks up, the stranger is gone.

He hesitates for a moment. What if it's drugged? He lifts the glass to his nose and smells. _It's fucking water._ With a hint of lemon. And it's not like he isn’t currently doing a very good job at poisoning himself anyway.

He shrugs. The water tastes just as heavenly as it looks. 

Maybe sometimes a glass of water is just a glass of water and people are just ... nice?

He discovers a gap that allows him to squeeze through the group of punk girls in front of him who are blocking his way to the bar. It's only when his hands are finally touching the sticky, long-suffering surface of the _Risiko_ counter that he realizes his nausea is gone. To be honest, he feels quite clear-headed – as if he didn't have a drink at all. Nor the lines. Nor the ... other stuff.

He begins to wonder if the tweedy water bloke wasn't some poofter trying to hit on him after all, but a plainclothes policeman, part of some "say no to drugs" scheme. It sounds American though, and the guy was clearly English. And Nick hasn't been in Germany long enough to know if the West-Berlin police does such a thing, too. They probably don’t have the money or the time for it – busy as they are bullying squatters and beating down protesters in the streets.

Anyway, what he needs now is a drink. A good strong German _pils_. Or two.

He leans across the counter with a crumpled _deutschmark_ note in his hand. 

_"Ein Bier bitte!"_ 1

That's one of the two German sentences he knows. The other one is _"Entschuldigung, ik sprekke kein Deutsch."_ 2 So far, he hasn't felt the need to learn more.

The bartender turns around – and the world comes to a screeching halt.

Nick _knows_ that guy. He has seen him before, heard him before - where was it? – yes, on TV, there had been something on TV. On tour in the Netherlands ...

The young man behind the bar is impossibly thin with a mop of spiky hair that seems to defy gravity. His face is pointy and angular with razor-sharp cheekbones and dark shadows lining the biggest, brightest, maddest pair of blue eyes Nick has ever seen. He is clad from head to toe in a black leather _something_ that looks like a combination of the S/M gear Nick has seen on the Schöneberg leather gays, industrial belts and something scavenged from a junkyard car.

"_Zwei Mark_," says the unearthly creature. 

Nick hands his _deutschmark_ across the counter.

The bartender nods and presses a number of coins into Nick's hand. They are still warm from prolonged skin contact. Nick wraps his fingers around the brass and copper like he has gotten hold of some strange magical talisman.

A brown beer bottle, cool and dewy from the fridge, is placed in front of him.

Finally, Nick loses his temporary speechlessness.

"Hey, I know you," he blurts out. "I saw you on TV. With your band. You were screaming like ... like a strangled cat or a dying child and the music was incredibly noisy. It was extraordinary."

The bartender looks at him. His wide blue eyes seem to grow even wider.

Then he opens his mouth. His answer is: "_Hä?_"

He shrugs, looks at Nick and shrugs again. "'_Tschuldigung, ich versteh' dich nicht. Ich sprech' nicht so gut Englisch._" 3

So, unfortunately, it's time for Nick's other German sentence, "_Entschuldigung, ik sprekke kein Deutsch._"

He shrugs as well – it's almost comical. 

From the left and right, other patrons are growing impatient, shouting for beer and vodka, waving their money at the strange bartender.

Nick is running out of time. 

So he does the expat thing that makes him feel like a kindergartener – or a monkey, trying to mimic human behaviour (maybe he should really start to learn some German to avoid situations like this ...). He points towards his chest and announces very loudly, very slowly:

"Nick. Nick Cave. From Australia."

At least the bartender understood that.

His smile exposes sharp, slightly crooked teeth.

"Blixa. Blixa Bargeld."

Despite the language barrier, Nick longs to reply. A witty remark about how this is the weirdest sounding German name he has ever heard – even in a country full of Gudruns and Wolfgangs – is burning on his tongue. However, he doesn't get to pursue the conversation any further.

"_Heee, Nick! There you are, altes Haus!_" 4

Someone pats his shoulder and Nick turns around to finally meet Christoph.

"Where the hell have you been?"

He wants to ask him about Blixa the bartender, but he doesn't get the chance, because his host is far too eager to introduce him to the reason for his sudden disappearance: a group of good-natured punks from the west of Germany – most of them called Andi – who just got their first record contract and are currently in the process of investing the new money into _pils_ and _jägermeister_. 

As they want everyone in the bar to have a share of their success, Nick has soon downed not one but three awful shots and listens to one of the Andis enthusiastically explain the differences between various German regional beers in broken English.

After an hour, Nick hasn't yet managed to disengage himself from the conversation. Instead, he has learned that nothing beats _altbier_ from Düsseldorf and that _kölsch_ from Cologne certainly is the devil. 

"They serve it in little _stangen_ and it becomes _schal_ when you just look at it, it's _ekel-haft_!!" the leader of the Andis slurs while clinging to his bottle of _KöPi_.

Nick nods and tries to keep up a facade of polite interest, while the schnapps is wreaking havoc on his brain – the moment of clarity from the miraculous glass of water already feels miles away – and his attention has long since wandered elsewhere.

If he shifts on the ratty sofa – just like this – he is able to catch a glimpse of the bar. Yes, there's Blixa's spiky hair just visible behind the heads of a row of patrons. Sometimes Nick manages to spot his face, watching from the distance as Blixa pours drinks and talks and laughs with a number of girls – all in German of course. Even if the noise, the music and the crowds of _Risiko_ weren't between them, Nick wouldn't understand a word of what he's saying.

Wait, and what's that? Isn't that the tweedy guy in beige, speaking to Blixa? What the hell are they talking about – and in which language?

Nick wants to get up, find some excuse, any excuse to move towards the counter and find out what is going on there. But he has barely made a move when Andi's hand on his shoulder forces him down again.

"You can't leave now! I want you to meet a friend of mine!"

There's another round of shots – vodka this time, not _jägermeister_ – and a guy with dark sunglasses and big blond hair and some impenetrable rant about record companies and lawsuits and something called _schlager_ seems to have appeared out of nowhere. But Nick has long since zoned out. Another _jägermeister_ and he's done for. 

[...]

When Nick regains his senses, _Risiko_ is as good as empty and the first grey fingers of dawn are creeping through the gaps in the cardboard-covered windows. 

"Oooh, shit!" 

His head feels like someone has taken his brain from his skull and stomped on it repeatedly. He groans as he tries to shift himself into a sitting position on the ratty pleather sofa on which he seems to have passed out last night.

One of the Andis is snoring on the floor in front of him. Nick manoeuvres around him in a wide circle – everything to avoid another conversation about _altbier_ – and tries to steer his own rather uncooperative body towards the door. 

There's a scraping, rustling sound behind him. Nick turns around – and freezes mid-motion as he recognizes Blixa the bartender who seems to have finished his shift and is now busy sweeping cigarette butts, shards of glass and other remnants of the night from the floor.

"Hey...," says Nick, because his brain is slow and sticky and he can't think of anything else. 

Blixa stops sweeping. The old-fashioned broom in his hand seems a strange artefact that doesn't fit at all with his leather-clad appearance.

"Oh, you're still here," he says. "The Australian, right? Do I have to return you to the lost and found?"

The words are tinged with a heavy German accent ("Ze Australian"), but still, he speaks perfect English.

Nick just stares at him, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. 

"How ... how did you learn to speak English that fast?" he asks.

"Oh ..." Blixa scratches his head and his spiky hair bounces. "I don't know? I think it gets easier when I'm drunk." 

He shrugs and gestures towards the row of empty beer bottles neatly lined on the counter. 

"Anyway, I need to close the place for today, so you and that other guy better hurry up. Here's _schicht im schacht!_"5

He registers Nick's dumbfounded expression and seems to take it as fear of being thrown out.

"Hm ... You look like you could need a little rest. You can stay until I'm done cleaning. But your friend here has to go!" He pokes the still snoring Düsseldorfer with his broom.

"He's not my friend. And... I... you..."

Nick still can't wrap his head around the linguistic miracle he is witnessing.

He already opens his mouth to ask. But then he looks at Blixa, thinks "Fuck it!" and decides to go with the flow.

"So you're in a band, aren't you? I've seen you on TV. Tell me how on earth you‘re making that kind of noise ..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1"A beer please" [return to text]
> 
> 2"I'm sorry, I don't speak German" [return to text]
> 
> 3"Sorry, I don't understand you. My English isn't that good." [return to text]
> 
> 4[80s style German, nobody would say "altes Haus" nowadays] "Heey Nick, there you are!" [return to text]
> 
> 5[slang, informal] "we're closed for today" [return to text]


	3. Geniale Dilletanten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the following chapter takes some chronological and geographical liberties with the foundation story of the Bad Seeds...

Blixa can't play guitar. 

So far, this hasn't been a problem. It certainly hasn't prevented him from being lead singer and guitarist in Einstürzende Neubauten. He doesn't need proper chords. For Neubauten, the wailing and screaming he has been forcing out of his instrument has been enough. It's _Anti-Musik_, after all.

Currently, Blixa doesn't even own a guitar. He had to sell the last one he owned to pay rent – for a room in a shared flat he got thrown out of a few weeks later anyway. 

Both of these facts haven't really bothered him. Until the day when Nick - the charismatic Australian junkie who might or might not be a vampire - asked him to join his band.

Blixa is very good at blood-curdling screams, German expressionist lyrics and finding creative solutions to integrate _autobahn_ bridges, junk cars or shopping carts into his musical oeuvre. But neither the German lyrics nor the industrial noises go well with the dark Americana concept of Nick's new project.

For the first time in his life, Blixa wonders if he should have stayed in school for a little bit longer – it would have been an opportunity for cheap guitar lessons... 

He shivers, as he walks down towards Kottbusser Tor after a visit at Nick's place in Dresdener Straße. It's cold and windy and he's been pondering Nick's offer for the better part of three days. 

The pros are overwhelming: he'd get to play in a band with Nick – who has captivated him from the very first moment they met at _Risiko_. No matter how much they deny it: Nick and his Australian friends are professional musicians who already had a record contract with their old band. Once they do a few recordings, the newly formed project has a good chance of even bigger success. The ingredients are all there: southern gothic lyrics, bluesy melodies, Nick's piano skills and of course, his unique voice. 

They might even get to launch a mainstream career: tours through England and America without the language barrier that makes Neubauten stick firmly in the avant-garde corner whenever they are playing outside of Germany. And as much as Blixa enjoys West-Berlin's cozy music scene, he's getting tired of playing the same handful of clubs over and over again. 

Which leads him back to the problem at hand: he can't play guitar and right now, he's too broke to even buy an instrument. 

_"Why did I tell him I was a guitarist again?"_

Because there is already a singer in the band and Blixa had to offer _something_.

Okay, he can improvise. He's _good_ at improvising. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the non-existent guitar.

Bartending earns him enough to afford rent – you don’t need much, if you mainly live in squats or on friends' couches –, food and amphetamines to get through the long Schöneberg nights. But it's definitively not enough for an instrument that fits the standards of an international rock band.

Contrary to many of his musician and artist friends, Blixa can't just tap his parents for cash. They are still living in their little flat at Grazer Damm and don't have money to spare for something as frivolous as their son's rather... unconventional... musical career.

Blixa walks past the concrete arch of Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum and enters the wide crossroads of the Kotti. The underground rumbles on its steel bridge like a hungry animal on the way to its hunting grounds, the omnipresent Turkish takeaways smell of grilled lamb and garlic and there's the usual crowd of _schnorrers_ seeking shelter in the building entrances.

Blixa was barely paying attention to his surroundings – until he spots a shop he has never seen before. Even if he passes this vast abomination of a crossroad almost every day.

"A. J. Krowlinsky - Musikinstrumente" reads the sign above the entrance. There is a cool snake logo on the window and behind the glass surface Blixa spots a row of interesting looking electric guitars. 

_"Is the universe trying to tell me something?“_

The sign that's taped to the window – _"Nur heute: Sonderangebote!"_ – gives him the final push to walk inside.

Behind the narrow door, a tiny room awaits him, every corner crammed with musical instruments. There's a big poster of Robert Johnson taped to the concrete wall in the back, next to a print of the first Velvet Underground cover and a Kraftwerk tour poster. Somewhere in the background, an old Queen record is playing. 

On a rack to the left of the entrance he discovers a row of electric guitars. Most of them have clearly seen better days. But what's that? The blue Fender Mustang looks in surprisingly good shape.

He hesitates – he has rent to pay (another room in a shared flat, let's see how long that one lasts...) and he's already dreading the next inevitable phone call with his parents: _"Christian, are you still working in that horrible bar? You can't just spend all your money on music that's not a career!"_ But the Fender's blue varnish feels smooth and warm under his fingers, like a living thing. Before he knows it, he has pulled the guitar from its rack.

He can't remember if there was a mirror next to the guitar stands when he walked in. But now he spots his reflection in the slightly dusty surface and damn, the guitar looks good on him. So much better than the old Hofner Colorama that he had to give away – its wooden finish had always reminded him of the _deutsche Eiche_ veneer in his parents’ living room.

"Do you want to try it out?" a voice rings out from behind him.

Blixa turns around, guitar still in hand. A slender, red-haired man seems to have manifested out of nowhere. He is dressed in a slim black suit and wears dark sunglasses even in the dim twilight of the shop. All in all, he looks more than a rock musician himself than a guy who would be selling instruments to them.

"Yeah, why not?" Blixa hears himself say.

_"But I don't have the cash to buy an original Fender... not even a second-hand one..."_ the little voice of reason in the back of his mind makes one last attempt. It's getting quieter by the second.

Before Blixa knows it, the guitar has been plugged into an amp and he's standing in front of the mirror again. For the blink of an eye, a ray of sunlight from the window reflects on the mirror’s surface and gives the impression of stage lights. And was that a car passing by outside or the roaring applause of a crowd?

The shopkeeper taps his shoe to the rhythm of the Queen song still playing in the background. He doesn't seem to be able to keep still even for a second. 

"Go ahead," he says. There's something strange in his smile. 

_"Something's wrong with that guy, but I can't put my finger on it..."_

But there's the guitar in Blixa's hands, its strap already slung around his shoulders, his fingers on the strings and the fretboard.

"Just so you know," he mumbles in the general direction of the shopkeeper, his eyes fixed firmly on the instrument. " I do avant-garde music."

"Well, that certainly sounds ... interesting," says the shopkeeper. "But I don't think the guitar minds."

He walks around the room in a semi-circle so he is now standing at Blixa's left side, his reflection visible next to him in the mirror. The sunglasses are still hiding his eyes and _what's going on with his feet?_

"Just play it," he says, a hand resting softly on Blixa's shoulder. "I think it likes you."

And Blixa plays.

What he wanted to do initially was to tweak the strings and make some noise – the way he carries the instrument through a Neubauten piece, the shrieking of the guitar just one more element in the apocalyptic cacophony of Andrew’s and Mufti's percussion. 

But the guitar has different plans. Blixa has no idea how it happens, but suddenly, his fingers are jumping onto the frets and he is playing the intro riffs of Velvet Underground's "Waiting For the Man".

"Very good," says the shopkeeper and taps his foot in the rhythm. "As I said, it likes you!" 

_"I'm buying a guitar, not a dog!“_ Blixa rolls his eyes.

"_Wart' mal! I’m just trying it out, who said anything about buying it?"_

His finger's are still playing the unfamiliar song, jumping into chords they've never done before – but for some reason it doesn't feel wrong at all.

It doesn't end when he's done with the Velvet Underground song. Now the guitar leads him smoothly into the main riff of "Mutiny in Heaven", a song from Nick‘s old band The Birthday Party.

_"Scheiße. I‘m buying it!"_


	4. Saint Huck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As noted before - I took a few creative liberties regarding the personnel, the chronology and the geographical details surrounding the end of The Birthday Party and the formation of the Bad Seeds.

When Blixa walks into the rehearsal room, two days later, the Fender Mustang earns him admiring glances from Mick Harvey.

"Nice guitar," he says. "Didn't know you played a Fender."

Nick himself, however, is nowhere to be seen.

“He’s late. As usual,” explains Mick with a tired shrug.

So far, the yet-unnamed new project consists of just the two of them. Anita, Nick's ex-girlfriend from Australia, has provided them with ideas and lyrics, but apart from her rather sporadic contribution by airmail, Nick and Mick are still looking for musical companions.

_"Like you!"_ Nick said during a long night in a seedy bar at Heinrichplatz, staring at Blixa with those strange green-blue eyes of his. _"I need someone like you – someone with a knack for the extraordinary."_

So here Blixa is, perching on the cold concrete floor of the rehearsal room as he plugs in his instrument and adjusts the amp. Both acts prove rather challenging: his fingers are sore from two days of practicing day and night.

He still has no idea how it happened, but something changed during the moment in front of the mirror at the music shop. He has gone from treating the guitar as just another source of noise towards just _knowing_ how to play it.

And the weirdest thing: after a day of playing all the songs he knew, experimenting with the Birthday Party back catalogue and the Neubauten riffs he usually left to Alex, Blixa had gone back to Kotti, determined to find out _was zur Hölle _was the matter with this guitar.

But when he stood in the passage where the concrete monstrosity of NKZ towered over Adalbertstraße, the shop was gone. Blixa has spent almost an hour, searching for A. J. Krowlinsky - Musikinstrumente, but to no avail.

He asked around in the Turkish kebab places and even went so far as to question the punks who hung around the steps to the underground, trying to bum money from passers-by. No one had seen or heard anything. All he ended up was a handful of honey-drenched baklava: a present from a friendly _dönermann _who thought Blixa looked like he was in dire need of a good meal, but didn't have anything vegetarian around except for the cakes.

When he returned to his shared flat with sticky hands, a full stomach and a growing sense of unease, Blixa had almost been sure he dreamt up the whole thing. If it wasn't for the light blue Fender Mustang that awaited him in his room, its sparkling varnish making it appear like an alien object: some Ziggy Stardust relict beamed down to earth.

Ever since he entered Nick's and Mick's rehearsal room – well it's more like a rehearsal cellar – the guitar has started to _hum_ within his hands, trembling like a racehorse seconds before the starting signal.

And then, finally, Nick arrives.

[…]

Since the first night they met in _Risiko_, Blixa has spent a lot of time with him – but still, every time Nick enters the room, it feels like he's meeting a character from a novel: tall, thin with jet-black hair (so far nobody has found out if he dyes it) and piercing blue eyes under intense brows. He looks more like a vampire from a piece of Gothic fiction or an extra from the _Kabinett des Dr. Caligari_ than a real person.

They start by playing a tape of the song they want Blixa to audition for: guitar and bass laying a hypnotic rhythmic foundation that seems to go on forever, mirroring the waves of the big river from the lyrics. Nick's voice howling above it all, recounting a bluesy _moritat_ of a grown-up Huck Finn who meets his doom in the big city.

Blixa loves it. It's new. It's muddy and gritty and _alive_. The polar opposite of Neubauten's intellectual industrial constructions. And the guitar line seems pretty simple, too.

"The lyrics are still a work in progress." Nick has that detached look with blown pupils, a sure sign that he's far from sober.

Blixa once swore to himself never to play in a junkie band. Amphetamines, pills, weed – no problem, but heroin? He's seen that going downhill far too often. He's friends with Christiane F., after all.

But apparently, he's willing to make a great deal of exceptions for Nick. Like playing lead guitar.

The tape has run through; they are heading into the song now. Mick first on bass and then on drums – if he can play every instrument under the sun, why do they even need other guys in the band? – Blixa on guitar and Nick on vocals.

_"Born of the river / _   
_Born of its ever-changing, never-changing murky water /_   
_Oh riverboat just rollin' along through the great great greasy city..."_

Blixa has never been big on storytelling. For him, lyrics express abstract images, sensations, sometimes dreams. He leaves narrative to the _liedermacher _and the NDW guys. But as his fingers jump across the strings and fret of his Fender, the images unfold almost by themselves: the brown-grey floods of the Mississippi, the boy on the boat, the willows on the shore, their branches heavy with Spanish moss. The lights of the city at the horizon – at once filled with promise and dark premonitions...

_"'O come to me!, O come to me!' is what the dirty city/ Say to Huck..."_

From the very moment he picked up the microphone, Nick has woken up. The drug-induced stupor has left his eyes and for the first time he seems fully present.

It's his voice and his words that are carrying the song, evoking the images and the feeling of the story that floats above the mesmerizing rhythm of guitar, bass and drums.

Whatever magic Blixa's mysterious blue Fender possesses – he might not need it after all. Now that the initial shock has worn off, Blixa manages to find the right positions for his fingers by himself more and more often. It's not that there are many changes in the rhythm over the course of the five stanzas.

When they are done, Nick drops the microphone and brushes a strand of wet hair from his sweat-covered face. He hasn't just sung the piece, but performed it with every fibre of his body.

"And... what do you think?" he asks.

"What am _I_ thinking?" Blixa laughs. He points towards his guitar. "I thought this was an audition!"

"Oh yes, don't worry, you were amazing,“ Nick says absentmindedly. He seems far more occupied with the song than with the quality of Blixa's guitar play.

Nick walks away from the microphone stand and sits down crosslegged on an equipment crate. He lights a cigarette and draws his old black coat around his shoulders. It makes him look like a large crow ruffling its feathers.

"There's something lacking in the song, but I don't know what it is. I was hoping you could help me."

Blixa looks towards Mick, who is busy adjusting something on the drum kit. He returns Blixa's look and shrugs. Meanwhile, Nick has produced a little notebook from his coat pocket and is scribbling something.

Blixa takes a deep breath and tries to replay the song in his head.

"I think it's the ending," he says after a while. "The music doesn't fit the story as well as it does at the beginning. The ... sense of ... I don't know the word, _vorahnung_? is very strong in the beginning. But the catastrophe in the end – the sound needs to be more intense there. Have you tried playing it faster? Or maybe... adding some noise to make the whole steamboat thing more intense. You can do it like this."

He grabs the Fender hard and twangs the strings – the guitar _howls_. For a second it seems to twitch in his hand like a snake.

The echo fades and Nick nods slowly – then he remains silent for a long while. The only sound is the metallic noise as Mick changes something with the high hat's set-up and the slight crackling of Nick's cigarette burning down.

Blixa decides he needs a cigarette break as well.

Eventually, Nick moves again.

"We didn't play it with the piano parts today," he says. "But if we do it faster and play up the piano in the second half and add some guitar noise to ... encapsulate not only the sense of premonition, but also the climax, the catastrophe in the end … Do you think that would work?"

Blixa thinks he can already hear it.

"Why not? I haven't really thought about the piano, but that's good," he says. "It can get louder and louder towards the end until it almost explodes. _Geil_."

Nick laughs. "Exactly!"

He gets up from his seat and steps towards the microphone. Blixa takes the cue, grinds his own cigarette under his boot heel and takes up his guitar again.

"I'd love to hear what you think about this one." Nick says. "It's a story about a girl..."

Mick, who has picked up the bass, nods. Then he turns around to address Blixa.

"Oh, by the way – I'm not sure if Nick has been clear on that, but you're in the band now."


	5. [Missing Scene] All Tomorrow's Parties

It's Monday afternoon – or is it Tuesday already? West-Berlin days have this habit of bleeding into each other. Anyway, it's some kind of afternoon early in the week and Nick and Blixa are lying on their backs on Blixa's bed – or rather the grubby mattress on the floor he calls his bed – sharing a joint while a Kraftwerk record is playing in the background. 

Usually, neither of them would consider marihuana their drug of choice. But Blixa got the pot from his friend Wolfgang – and who are they to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Nick exhales deeply as he traces the lines of the crumbling stucco on the ceiling with his eyes.

He likes the way weed makes him sink into the music: the repetitive synth lines of the "Kometenmelodie" have turned into a soft cushion on which his mind can rest. Occasionally, melodic spirals rise up, dancing slowly like kelp in streaming water. Sometimes, there's a sparkling line of single notes, like beads of dew on a sunny morning, before everything melts into the cloud of electronic sound again.

Nick takes another drag and hands the spliff to Blixa, carefully, as if he were handling a test tube full of deadly chemicals. There's a thin like of spilled ash on the mattress between them – a testament to the fact that neither of them is an expert when it comes to rolling joints. 

Blixa flinches when their fingers are touching, almost dropping the joint.

"Heh, careful, that's the last one!"

Nick turns his head to the side, watching Blixa as he puts the stub between his lips. He inhales and closes his eyes. Afterwards, he remains motionless. Even with the distorted perception of time you experience when you're stoned it's rare to see him this quiet for such a long time.

After what seems like aeons, he turns his head abruptly, looking at Nick with slightly bloodshot eyes.

"I think I want to sing in English!"

_"What?"_

"I want to sing in English," Blixa repeats. "Like you do. I want to find out what it feels like."

"Well, it feels like you're opening your mouth and sounds come out. If you're lucky it's a melody."

Nick is stoned enough; he giggles at his own joke, but Blixa keeps staring at him – wide-eyed and deadly serious.

"I don't think so." 

With Blixa's accent it comes out as "sink so" and Nick can't for the life of him imagine how this man is supposed to wrap his harsh German vocal style around the intricacies of English pronunciation.

But on the other hand, he knows how persistent Blixa can be once he puts his mind on something.

"What do you mean, you want to know what it feels like?"

"When I talk to you I don't think in German, I think in English," Blixa replies. "But when I'm making music I always think in German – and I think my mind functions differently in English. And I want to try out, how it works, when I'm making music. Especially when I'm singing in another language."

"Hm… I'm a bit jealous, you know? I can't even imagine what it's like, writing songs, playing music in two languages."

Blixa laughs. "Tja. It's your fault, not learning more than _'Ein Bier bitte!'_"

"Well, you got me there!"

The record stops, but they are both too lazy to get up and put on Side B. Heavy weed-induced tiredness is tugging at the edges of Nick's consciousness. He yawns.

"What kind of song are you imagining? If you want to write a piece in English?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure if I can write something myself yet – but I'm thinking about a cover to start with."

"Hm, you have a nice deep voice if you're not yelling like a banshee – what about Cash? Most of his songs are actually quite easy."

Blixa looks at him with utter disgust.

"Johnny Cash. Really? Nick, look at me!" Still lying flat on his back, Blixa raises his arms in a gesture to encompass it all: the room with the big soot stain on the wall, the mattress, the piles of trash in the corner as well as himself with his mad crow's nest of hair, asymmetric eyeliner and latest outlandish outfit of black rubber pants and a woman's off-the-shoulder top. "Do I look like someone who would do a country song?"

Nick laughs. "Well, it would go nicely with the name: Cash, Bargeld, that's a beautiful translation."

Blixa rolls his eyes. "How often do I have to tell you that the name comes from Johannes Baargeld, the Dada painter?"

Now Nick is laughing uncontrollably "Johannes? That's like John, isn't it? John Bargeld! Johnny Cash! That's amazing!"

Blixa looks peeved only for a second – then he starts giggling too. 

"Okay, okay, I never thought about that." Still laughing, he pokes Nick in the side. "Is that the true reason you became friends with me? Because of the name?"

"I'm sure you have ... other qualities."

They are both laughing, one of these endless stoned giggle fits that leaves Nick with his whole body aching as if he just ran a mile uphill. When he finally calms down, he notices a strange look in Blixa's eyes. He was laughing, too, yes, but it seems that behind the humour there was something he didn't find funny at all.

"Why don't you do a classic? A folk song?" Nick asks after a while, trying to return some seriousness to the conversation. "Or... Nancy Sinatra? We did 'These Boot Were Made for Walking' with the Boys Next Door and it worked just fine."

Blixa has risen into a sitting position – from where he's lying, Nick can only see his back. 

"Nancy Sinatra, hm?"

"I think it's interesting to cover a song that was originally written for a woman. Unconventional. I was thinking about doing some Nico myself – 'All Tomorrow's Parties' maybe."

For a while, Blixa remains silent. The he moves towards the record player.

"Germans singing English, hm?" He pulls out the album with the Warhol banana on the cover. "Okay, let's hear how she's doing it!"

"Oh, and look, there's some _gras_[1] left," he adds as the xylophone intro of "Sunday Morning" fills the room. He waves the the little plastic bag Wolfgang gave him. "If we are careful, we got enough for another one."__

_ __ _

_ __ _

Nick watches in silence as Blixa builds the joint. He doesn't know if it's the drug or something else that makes him stare transfixed at Blixa's long, elegant fingers, at his mouth as he licks the leaves to make them stick together. It's only when Blixa is done and lifts his head to admire his slightly wobbly piece of work that Nick looks away bashfully. 

As the rest of the evening drowns in herbal smoke, tambourine rhythm and droning guitars, Nick tries to focus his thoughts on how he'd interpret 'All Tomorrow's Parties' – and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11"grass", German slang for weed[return to text]


	6. Sehnsucht

It's several months later in a greasy bar on Wiener Straße, when Nick realizes: things have become _complicated_.

Blixa claims he only goes to the place (_Einfall_? _Abfall_? Those German names all sound the same...) when he's really really drunk. If you're of the avant-garde _Risiko _crowd you don't show your face in a run-of-the-mill German _eckkneipe_.

This is one of these nights: not buzzing with the lightning-clarity of speed, but drenched with beer and cheap wine instead.

The evening started out rather innocently. Pizza with Christoph and his artist friends to celebrate a new film project turned into a pub crawl – and then escalated halfway along Oranienstraße. Nick isn't sure how he ended up alone with Blixa, staggering along Wiener Straße while the Eastern sky is already tinged with the first hint of dawn. His head is reeling, but the night isn't over yet.

They enter the bar and find an empty table in the back. Nick lights a cigarette while Blixa talks to the bartender – which takes longer than expected. The chubby guy behind the bar doesn't seem to shut up, going on and on about some project with metal sculptures, even if Blixa's expression has long since switched from polite interest to utter boredom.

Eventually, however, Blixa returns with two tall _weizen_ in old-fashioned glasses and a small bowl of crisps the bartender has given him "for the electrolytes".

He sits down, lifts his beer in a silent "_pros_t" – and that's the moment then when the situation tips over into something …weird.

There's music playing in the background, glasses clinking and a few muffled voices talking in German – but suddenly everything seems unnaturally quiet. Nick takes a deep drag from his beer, using the big glass as a shield against the strange, invisible barrier of silence that has descended between them.

Nick can't seem to hold Blixa's bright blue gaze for too long. But avoiding his eyes and accidentally looking at his mouth – his wide mouth with these full lips that give him a touch of the feminine – is even worse.

To be honest, looking at any part of Blixa's face has the tendency to render him nervous and flustered. And this has been going on for longer that Nick wants to admit. A month, maybe two? Maybe it already started during that first night in _Risiko_.

During the last couple of weeks, everything has turned into a problem: watching Blixa's fingers when he plays guitar. Staring at his leather-clad legs when he dons that industrial getup with all those buckles and leather straps, which should look ridiculous, but instead it turns Nick's mouth dry and makes his heartbeat speed up. And – here it gets especially bad – feeling Blixa's warm body at his side when they are sitting on the ratty bed in Nick's room, discussing song lyrics and arrangements.

And tonight, on Wiener Straße, Blixa's arm suddenly ended up around Nick's shoulders in an embrace that pulled him very close for a very long time. It might just have been a drunken grip for support– but it certainly didn't feel that way.

And now Blixa is staring at him – no, not staring, _gazing._ It's not the wide-eyed speed demon look Nick has come to associate with the party nights during which Blixa turns into a manic, sweaty creature who talks too fast and can't remain in one spot for longer than a few seconds. His eyes are softer tonight, the irises a darker shade of blue in the light from the dripping candle someone has stuck on an empty wine bottle. He looks away and fumbles for a cigarette.

The silence drags on. It's probably the longest time they've ever spend together without speaking. At the counter – just at the other side of the room, but it could as well be another universe – the bartender is bantering with a friend in German. The cheery, but monotonous _neue deutsche welle _song that has been playing in the background ends, another one starts – and still, neither Nick nor Blixa has said a word.

Blixa sighs, takes a final drag from his cigarette and extinguishes it in the overflowing ashtray next to the bottle-turned-candlestick. Afterwards, his hand comes to rest on the battered surface of the table. Nick is struck by the sudden impulse to reach out and put his hand on Blixa's. Just to feel the skin, stroke the veiny backs of his hand.

_No! _

He wraps his fingers around his half-empty glass of beer. The lukewarm glass demands a refill, but does little to alleviate his desire.

Finally, Blixa breaks the silence.

"You look very glum. Is the beer that bad?"

Nick shrugs.

"I think, I'm just a bit over it." His voice is deliberately indifferent, but inside he's shaking.

"What's this stuff we're drinking, anyway?" he continues in a lighter vein. "It tastes like bananas. Isn't there a law against these things? With you Germans being so proud of your beer?"

Blixa laughs, but it sounds a little shaky.

"I don't think I'm the right person to explain you the _reinheitsgebot_."

"Isn't there someone somewhere in this country, who made a law against banana beer!"

"_Naja_, we're in West-Berlin, remember? The laws are different here."

They are both grinning now, but still...

The last lukewarm swig of _weizen_ tastes stale with a hint of rotten fruit. Nick really feels tired now. The energy and the devil-may-care attitude of the alcohol have died down. A good night's sleep – even the inevitable hangover tomorrow – might help to put a barrier between him and the strange feelings this night has brought up. At least for a little while.

"I think it's time to go home."

His legs are a bit wobbly and he comes close to knocking down his chair when he rises from the table. But he feels capable of mastering the short walk towards Dresdener Straße.

"Okay..."

Is that disappointment in Blixa's eyes?

The strange awkwardness descends once again between them as Blixa untangles his legs from underneath the chair and swears in German when he manages to drop his cigarette pack. Then he puts on his jacket and is ready to leave as well.

Outside, it has gotten quite cold. Nick pulls his new flea-market coat closer and shivers – the garment might look cool, but the fabric is definitively too thin for the season.

They walk along Wiener Straße, once again in silence. When they reach Görlitzer Bahnhof, Blixa stops.

He points towards the steel construction above the street where the U1 rattles towards the west.

"Look, the trains are running again!"

It's late or rather early enough that the underground service has resumed in regular intervals – they do stop for a few hours on weekday nights. That's important, because Blixa lives in Schöneberg – and depending on how the underground and busses are running, his way home can take up to an hour.

Nick hopes he'll move to a place a little closer to Kreuzberg soon. After all, Blixa seems to be changing his living arrangements more often than his clothes, moving from shared flat to squat and back again. Nick has given up to keep track of it all. He himself likes to stay in his little bohemian refuge _chez Christoph._ With his books and his typewriter, the pin-up posters and reproductions of German Gothic miniatures on the wall: Stefan Lochner demons watching as he is typing away on his never-ending novel.

Now Blixa is extinguishing his cigarette with his boot heel, burying his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

"_Naja_. I'll be on my way then."

Nick swallows hard. Despite the cold heat is rising in his cheeks. He takes a drag from his cigarette, looks at the underground bridge then back towards Blixa.

"Do you want to come over?" he hears himself asking. "I think Christoph's sofa is free."

A perfectly innocent question, people are crashing at Christoph's vast factory loft all the time. Blixa has spent the night there a billion times when he was too wasted to get back to his own place. But today it sounds... well..., Nick is already regretting to have ever opened his mouth.

Once again he encounters that strange stare from Blixa, his eyes now half hidden underneath shaggy blond bangs – the artful construction he teased his hair into hasn't survived the course of the night.

"_Nee, lass mal_... not tonight," he mumbles after a pause that has become unbearably long.

He sighs, looks to the left and the right, shifting from one foot to the other to fight the cold that must be getting to him, too.

"I have the early shift tomorrow. _Risiko_ is closer from my place."

"Okay... See you at rehearsal then."

Nick wants to add more, wants to yell at Blixa, beg him to stay here with him. He wants to tell him that whatever happens here, this isn't finished, that this _has _to be resolved to stop him from going insane. But he doesn't. Of course not.

Instead, he flicks away his cigarette and starts walking. Past Blixa, who's still standing in front of the stairs that lead up to the platform_,_ past the _u-bahn_ bridge and across Skalitzer Straße.

He doesn't turn around. Even if he can feel Blixa's eyes on his back all the way until he turns around the corner into Oranienstraße and vanishes from view.

[...]

"Now this was embarrassing!"

Crowley and Aziraphale are standing on Oberbaumbrücke, watching the sunrise over East Berlin. In the distance, behind the glittering water of the river Spree, the spire of the TV tower pierces the horizon above Mitte where grey square buildings greet the onsetting day. Here, only a few kilometres away, lies another country – another world, another universe.

The sentries at the eastern end of Oberbaumbrücke are oblivious to the presence of the two figures in no man's land – angels and demons can avoid being seen if they make an effort. And today, Crowley and Aziraphale think the occasion worthy enough to make an effort.

Besides, Aziraphale likes the view from here. Siegessäule also has a good view, but the victory column is also a favourite lookout for his Berlin colleagues – and making small-talk with Damiel and Cassiel is always so _awkward_.

"Embarrassing?" he replies once he's done admiring the sunrise. "I think we were rather successful!"

Crowley drapes himself into a sitting position on the western railing, balancing dangerously close to the edge.

"You're calling that successful? Those two idiots were staring at each other like lovesick guinea pigs – and then _nothing _happened_._"

"That's an interesting comparison. Have you ever seen a guinea pig in love? From what I know it involves a lot of squeaking and poking each others' sides with their noses."

"Come on, angel, this is not a literary discussion - and absolutely not a zoological one!"

Crowley grimaces as he adjusts his sunglasses.

"What I mean is that it's ridiculously enough that we're playing cupids at all! That's so far out of our job description it could as well be on Mars. And there's probably a dozen of regulation on both sides we're trespassing with this little hobby of ours. But if we insist on doing this, we should at least do it properly!"

"But we _are_ doing it properly!" Aziraphale replies. "Look, I took care of the language barrier and you got that guitar. I think that was very good work."

Crowley sighs. "How did we get into this again? _You_ wanted to meddle."

"No, _you_ did!" Aziraphale's voice has gotten high with agitation. "I merely felt sorry for the poor boy in the gutter. _You_convinced me to meddle!"

"Yeah, but _you_ miracled the drugs from his system. And then you had to do it again, because he was stupid enough to poison himself a second time during the course of a single week!"

"He didn't remember the first time!"

"Still. Your little mortal... _guinea pig..."_

"I thought you weren't keen on zoological discussions?"

"Anyway, your little .._.protegé_ managed to overload his system with a dozen poisonous chemicals _twice _and your instinctive reaction was. 'Oh, I should make him fall in love so he feels better'?"

"I didn't 'make him fall in love'! You know as well as I do that humans have free will. He fell in love all by himself."

_"Oh yes, he fell...." _

Aziraphale shifts from one foot to the other. "But afterwards, I helped him a little," he admits. "I was merely making it easier for them to talk to each other. And to play music together – even if I don't know why they’re producing that dreadful noise half of the time."

"Well, I rather like the sound. At least one good thing has come out of it. I'm thinking about getting the record as a souvenir."

Crowley stretches, yawns and begins to climb down from the bannister.

"Anyway, whatever we've done – it doesn't seem to have worked out. It's been months and they still haven't understood the true nature of what they're feeling."

"And what do you suggest now?"

Crowley shrugs. "There are two options. The sensible one: we give up, leave them be – obey our orders. There are dozens of other jobs waiting – I already got a list of temptations in Poland from Hastur. I shouldn't even be here anymore. I'm sure your guys have given you a number of new assignment as well."

Aziraphale has been avoiding _a lot_ of calls from Gabriel, finding more and more flimsy excuses for his prolonged stay in West-Berlin. He should move on as well. Still, he can't help but ask:

"What's the other option?"

Crowley's grins and the yellow glow of his eyes flashes across the rim of his sunglasses. "The other option, my friend, is the fun one. The one where we finish this damn... this godforsak.... this blasted job!"


	7. Keine Macht für Niemand

When Blixa and Nick emerge from the rehearsal room, squinting into the bright sunlight of the spring afternoon, they are greeted with the noises of a chanting crowd and the distant blaring of police sirens. 

"What's going on?" Nick's fingers are shaking as he puts on his sunglasses. 

"A _demo_... , what's it called in English? A protest, I think." 

Blixa wishes he had brought sunglasses as well. His left eyelid is twitching with sleep deprivation and every ray of light seems about to drill a hole into his skull. After a long night filled with various interesting substances, they might have ended up with an almost-finished version of that flood-and-Elvis song Nick has been labouring on for so many months. But it has also left Blixa in a state where all he longs for is a horizontal surface to crash on for at least twelve hours. Afterwards, he might start to feel like a human being again.

Instead, he gets protest noises from around the corner, growing louder and louder.

"They are on Skalitzer Straße," Blixa sighs. "They're always on Skalitzer Straße."

"Shit," says Nick. "That's on my way home."

"Mine too."

In theory, they might be able to take a detour, circumnavigate the protest via the backstreets, crossing Skalitzer Straße further to the west. But by now, Blixa's limbs are leaden, his thoughts excruciatingly slow and he wants to get home as fast as possible.

"Let's have a look. Maybe it'll be over in a minute..."

He has his doubts, though, which are growing fast as they are walking the few hundred meters towards Skalitzer Straße. The chanting is getting louder and he recognizes the distinct slogans of a squatters' protest.

Blixa knows how these things work, he has attended several protests himself, most of the time because he was being dragged there by friends from the various squats he has lived in. He also knows how quickly a demo can escalate.

The rally is right in front of them now. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand young people about their age, holding up hand-painted signs and banners while Ton Steine Scherben is playing from a van with an improvised PA.

The music almost manages to drown out the engine noise of the sirens. Blixa counts six police cars in his field of vision alone and half a _hundertschaft_1 on foot. What worries him are the white helmets the cops are carrying – together with the plastic shields this means things can get very nasty very quickly. 

"What's going on in there, what do they want?" 

Nick has taken off his sunglasses, squinting as he tries to decipher the German slogans on the _transpis_.2

"They are protesting against the eviction of a squatted house in Cuvrystraße," Blixa explains after a quick look at the signs. He tries to remember if he has heard anything about the protest being announced or if he knows anything about the house in question. 

"A really stupid thing from what it looks like. The squatters were evicted despite the _Berliner Linie_ agreement" He sighs. "Nobody learned anything from '81."

More than two years have passed since big street riots from 1981 and Blixa has to admit, he's not really up to date with the _hausbesetzer_3 scene. Lately, he's been caught up so deeply in his music that he barely sees the other guys from his own house. He only visits his Schöneberg squat for sleeping and the occasional change of clothes. It's hardly surprising that he hasn't heard about the house in Cuvrystraße being cleared by the police.

It's all Nick's fault. Blixa has spent what felt like whole weeks holed up with him in the rehearsal room – just the two of them. Even Mick Harvey has been involved only sporadically.

Making music with Nick is so easy. It feels natural – not so much like an intellectual act, but a physical need like eating or fucking. Nick provides the melodies, bringing them to life on the piano with magical fingers, and Blixa twists them into new and strange shapes. Some turn out full of melancholy beauty, some dark and disturbing, as he adds his particular distorted Berlin touch to Nick's bluesy incantations.

The music fills every waking hour – and lately, Nick has also found his way into Blixa's dreams. It started with the songs, their melodies still echoing in Blixa's head when he was falling asleep. But then he woke up, blood throbbing hotly through his body, his arms and legs tingling with the familiar aftermath of an amphetamine rush and the memory of Nick's face still far too vivid in his mind's eye.

It has gotten worse since then. 

Blixa might have even neglected his own music – something he never thought possible. After all, it has always been Neubauten that makes him more than just a guy who got thrown out of school and spent years on the dole. 

But working with Nick is like a drug he can't quit. 

Whenever Nick vanishes into the dim bathroom, emerging with fresh marks on his arm and that glassy look in his eyes, Blixa wonders if the bliss that's running through his veins right then is even rudimentarily as intense as what Blixa feels whenever he plugs in his guitar next to Nick's piano and plays the first note. Oh, and these flowery metaphors are also Nick's fault – before, Blixa wouldn't have bothered with something as frivolous as _Romantic poetry_.

And here they are now, two creatures of the night forced out into daylight, barely holding themselves upright by the tattered remainders of last night's substance abuse. And there's this damned _demo_ between them and a well-deserved night (or rather afternoon) of rest. 

"_Häuser für alle und zwar umsonst_," the protesters are shouting. And: "_Wer sich nicht wehrt, der lebt verkehrt!_"4

Blixa is on their side, of course he is. But can't those guys just shut up right now? His brain feels like it's close to popping out of his ears.

"Do you think we can just cross the street?" Nick asks. He's already stepped forward, approaching the protest. "I don't wanna wait forever."

Before Blixa is able to say anything to prevent it, Nick has slipped through a narrow gap in the line of policemen and is now moving into the center of the group of protesters.

Blixa opens his mouth to protest, but the rally is moving forward and he's about to lose sight of Nick. He has no other choice but to follow him.

He grimaces as he manoeuvres through the line of cops – thankfully the _bullen_ aren't wearing their helmets yet. They let him through, assuming he's a belated participant in the protest. He certainly looks the part with his punk-ish haircut and leather jacket.

"Nick?"

Blixa is surrounding by dozens of protesters now. Students in olive parkas and denim jackets, punks with brightly coloured mohawks, girls with palitücher wrapped around their necks and thirty-something squatting veterans straight from the Georg-von-Rauch-Haus. 

No trace of Nick's long coat and crow-black hair. 

Blixa pushes his way through another row of protesters who are standing tightly packed now. The rally has come to a standstill, which is never a good sign. But the _lauti_5 is still blaring – playing a fast punk rock piece by Slime now – and the protesters are shouting their slogans. Blixa has no way of seeing what is happening in front. And there's still no sign of Nick.

"_He, du da, haste meinen Kumpel gesehen?_" he taps the girl next to him on the shoulder. "_Großer dünner Typ in Schwarz. Australier._"6

"_Nee, keene Ahnung, du._" She shrugs. "_Da vorn wird's gerade eng. Pass lieber auf._"7

Blixa sighs and tries to move closer to the front, squeezing through a row of punks. Somewhere in the drug-ridden back of his brain panic begins to rear its head.

"_Ich such' meinen Kumpel. Australischer Grufti, ganz in schwarz. Sieht ziemlich fertig aus. Habt ihr den gesehen?_"8

Once again, no one is able to help him.

"_Scheiße._"

Of course, Nick knows his way home, he doesn't need Blixa to babysit him. But still... having him running around here, drugged and clueless with the cops all over the place – Blixa doesn't like it, doesn't like it at all. To be honest, his stomach cramps into an ugly little knot, just thinking about it.

There! Ten, twenty meters in front of him he spots Nick's face behind a group of black-clad punks. Fuck. This doesn't look good. Blixa hasn't recognized him at first, because his black coat blended in so well with what looks like the formation of a _schwarzer block_.

"Nick! Over here!"

Blixa is desperate enough to wave and shout, which gets him an evil glare from one of the black block guys. He doesn't care. His first priority is to get Nick out of here. 

He moves through the crowd of tightly-packed protesters like a nineteenth century explorer through a vine-covered jungle, wishing he could just chop his way through until he reaches Nick.

"_Ey, wat soll'n ditte?_"9

"_Vollidiot! Pass doch auf, wo du hintrittst!_"10

Blixa ignores the angry comments as well as the elbows pushing into his side as he squeezes through a particularly tight spot between two burly protesters. He's wearing so much leather he probably won't even bruise.

He's standing in the centre of the black block now. The protesters in matching black jackets and trousers, with scarves around their necks that can easily be turned into masks, are eyeing him suspiciously. Blixa is in all black, too, but his biker jacket and bondage leather trousers are not the utilitarian wear you want to be dressed in when you're planning to start a riot.

He couldn't care less, though. His attention is focussed on Nick who has that detached, spaced out look in his eyes that signifies that he might not even know where he is or what he's gotten into.

"Nick!"

Finally, he turns his head and recognizes Blixa. 

"There you are! I thought you were following me!"

There's still a line of black-clad punks separating them, but Blixa's heart jumps with relief.

He gestures towards the right edge of the rally at the northern side of Skalitzer Straße.

"We're almost through, let's go!"

Nick nods, begins to move – and that's when everything goes to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Hundertschaft - a unit of around 80 policemen [return to text]
> 
> 2Transpis - German left slang for transparents/banners [return to text]
> 
> 3Hausbesetzer - squatters[return to text]
> 
> 4old squatter slogans: "Housing for everyone, for free!" and "Those who don't resist live in the wrong"[return to text]
> 
> 5Lauti - leftist slang for "lautsprecher", speaker[return to text]
> 
> 6,"Hey, have you seen my buddy?", "Tall thin guy, wearing back. Australian."[return to text]
> 
> 7"No, I have no idea.", "Be careful, it's getting tight [dangerous] in the front!"[return to text]
> 
> 8"I'm looking for my buddy. Australian goth, all in black. Looks pretty wasted. Have you seen him?"[return to text]
> 
> 9[Berlin dialect] "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"[return to text]
> 
> 10"Idiot! Watch where you're going!"[return to text]


	8. Your Turn To Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note:
> 
> This chapter features (not very explicit) descriptions of police brutality. 
> 
> In the light of the current (horrible) situation in the US, the scenes described here might hit a bit too close to home for some readers. 
> 
> When I wrote the story in the summer of 2019, however, it was from a German/European perspective, with my own and my friends' impressions and experiences of the riots and polizeigewalt surrounding the 2017 G20 in Hamburg in mind. The rest was inspired by the research I did on the West-Berlin scene and the squatter movement of the early 80s.

_"Sie da hinten! Lassen Sie die Flasche fallen!" _1

Blixa freezes as the cop's voice blares through the megaphone – even if it's not him the order was directed at. 

A surge of tension runs through the black block. Protesters clench their fists among mutters of “bullenschweine”2 . Some are reaching for their scarves, ready to disobey the ban on wearing face coverings in an instant. 

"Oh shit..."

Nick is staring wide-eyed at something behind Blixa's back.

Slowly, Blixa turns around.

There's the guy with the bottle. A green bottle with something stuffed inside it. It might just be a drunk punk carrying a wine bottle – but it could just as well be someone stupid enough to bring a molotov cocktail to a protest.

_"Sofort die Flasche fallen lassen!!"_3

The cops are wielding batons now. And they are wearing their white helmets that make them look like stormtroopers from _Krieg der Sterne_.

Glass splinters as the bottle crashes to the ground. _Molli_ or not, it's too late. 

The police advances in a semi-circle, closing in on the protesters – with Nick and Blixa being stuck right in the centre of the black block.

They get shoved together like sheep being round up. With their batons out, the cops aren't exactly squeamish and the protesters’ muttered swears have turned into raised fists and middle fingers. 

Right now, it's just the memory of ’81, when the squatter riots were beaten down brutally by the police, that keeps the insults from turning into full-blown violence. But memory is a thin thread and it's rapidly fraying.

Stuck in the middle of the knot of protesters, Blixa gasps for air. The lack of sleep together with remnants of the drugs still in his system threatens to push him into full-blown panic. He tries to breathe slowly, willing down the rising tightness in his throat.

"We'll get out of here. We weren't involved, they can’t hold us here forever!"

He manages to calm down for a moment – until he realizes that they are completely surrounded by a chain of policemen. And that the cops have started to pick out individual people for ID-ing. Honestly? _That's_ their latest idea of de-escalation?

They are very close towards Nick now. Nick, who's still drugged out of his mind. 

What he gets ID’d, too? Does he even have papers? If he doesn’t, they’ll arrest him and probably do a drug check. Does he have a visa? Does he need one? Is it still valid? How long has he lived here, exactly? 

Blixa realizes that he has never wasted a thought about any of these things.

He just accepted that Nick came to West-Berlin and settled here after he and Mick left London last year. Since then, Nick has made himself at home in a spare room of Christoph Dreher's vast factory loft and became a natural part of the _Risiko_ clique. 

Blixa has no idea if Nick ever got paperwork done. At what kind of _behörde_4 do you even do that? The only one Blixa himself is familiar with is _sozialamt_, the social welfare office – a necessary evil whenever money got too tight. He grimaces with disgust as he remembers long hours waiting in stuffy grey corridors only to be let into equally stuffy grey offices where he had to listen to things like _"Herr Emmerich, wenn Sie keine Einnahmen nachweisen können, ist 'Musiker' keine zulässige Berufsbezeichnung."_5

Anyway, any experience Blixa had there is probably child's play compared to how uncomfortable things might become if Nick gets ID’d and drug-checked by the determined-looking cops who are now encircling them.

_"Ausweis bitte!"_6

Another one of the punks is handing over his papers. Nick is standing right next to him, looking increasingly uncomfortable.

Elbowing his way through the protesters in front of him, Blixa finally reaches Nick's side. 

"They're going to check our papers," he hisses. "Do you have an ID with you?"

Nick shrugs. "My Australian passport, yes. It’s in my wallet somewhere..." He starts to fumble through his coat pockets – only to freeze mid-motion.

"Shit!"

"What's going on?"

Nick grabs Blixa's arm and draws him close. With his hand hidden between their bodies he reaches into his pocket and produces a small plastic bag filled with crystalline brown powder.

"Put that away! _Schnell!_"

Nick slips the bag back into his pocket. 

"What am I supposed to do with it. Throw it away?"

Blixa doesn't like the way he's seen Nick's fingers clenching around the little plastic bag, the relief in his eyes when he gets to put it back. 

Still, throwing it away might not be a good idea. They're far too exposed here. Blixa looks around hectically, cold sweat forming at the back of his neck. 

The black block members are standing closer together now. They too are trying to hide something in the middle of their group – probably trying to put on masks or removing stones from the street paving before they launch an attack. 

After the black-clad protesters have moved to the other side of the encircled area, however, Nick and Blixa find themselves in direct line of sight of a policeman who is already scrutinizing them from below the rim of his stormtrooper helmet. Now he points at Nick.

_"Sie da! Kommen se mal her!"_7

_Okay. Now we’re fucked._

[…]

This is when the miracle happens.

None of them has seen the man in beige arriving. But suddenly he appears behind the row of policemen as if he has just manifested himself out of thin air. He is addressing the cop who was speaking to Nick.

His curly, almost white blond hair and light tweed coat look familiar. Blixa has seen this man before, but he can't remember when and where. This isn’t unusual when it comes to acquaintances from _Risiko_,_ Frontkino_, _Dschungel_ or _SO 36_. He meets so many people during a night out that their faces tend to melt into each other after sunrise. Even if the stranger's friendly English-teacher-demeanour and the way he dresses stand out from the fishnet-and-leather looks Blixa is used to from Berlin nightlife.

"Excuse me?" the tweedy stranger asks in an almost cheerfully friendly voice. As if he's inquiring about the price of some particularly nice apples at a market stall instead of facing a _hundertschaft_ of cops in riot gear kettling a group of angry protesters.

"Excuse me, can you help me, sir? I think I might have lost my wallet and I wanted to know..." 

The man in beige touches the policeman lightly at the shoulder – and something very strange happens. The cop turns around, lifts his visor and moves to the side as if he were all alone on the street giving directions.

There's now a break in the line at least one meter wide, maybe even more.

Blixa doesn't think, he just reacts.

"Run!" he yells and pushes Nick forward.

Everything happens very fast.

Both of Blixa's hand on his back giving him momentum, Nick stumbles forward, regains his balance – and runs. He's through the line of cops within seconds, gaining speed as he crosses the remainder of Skalitzer Straße.

_"He, stehenbleiben!!"_8 someone yells from the uniformed line. 

But despite the drugs and the exhaustion, Nick is _fast_. Panic seems to provide him with additional speed as he sprints across the street, long legs flying. Within an instant he has escaped into one of the side streets and vanished.

Blixa is left alone within the pit – the gap in the line of cops has closed again. Unfortunately, now the bullen have focussed their attention on him.

_"Sie, da, mit der Punkerfrisur! Herkommen!"_9

Blixa might not be the one who carries a bag of heroin in his coat pocket, but still, he's in no state to pass any kind of tox screen. And he's not even carrying an ID – he’s lost it _again_ and hasn’t gotten around to replace it – which means the _bullen_ might arrest him and then do the drug test.

He needs to get out of here as fast as possible. He needs to find Nick. But he's unable to move, to do anything other than to stare at the cop, caught like a deer in the headlights.

Which is when the second miracle of the day happens.

"Excuse me, sir, but I still haven't found my wallet." The stranger in beige has reappeared.

Why on earth is he speaking English? And does the cop even understand what he's saying?

Instead of chasing him away, two policemen are turning around to address the stranger. He points towards something on the floor, talking in a low voice Blixa can't understand. And what the hell is happening now?

One of the cop bends forward to take a closer look, stumbles, loses his balance and has to stabilize himself by putting his hands on the ground. His colleague turns around to look at him.

There's ten meters free space in front of Blixa, a stretch of grey asphalt shot through with potholes.

The _bulle_ is still crouching on the floor, cursing under his breath.

Now or never.

Blixa runs.

He sprints towards the gap in the line of policemen. His heart is beating loud and fast in his chest, air rushing past his ears and the world narrows down towards the uneven ground under his feet and the crouching policeman in front of him.

_"Stop! Bleiben Sie sofort...."_

The cop doesn't finish his sentence. Because Blixa – who never made it above a _teilnahmeurkunde_ during ten years of _bundesjugendspiele_10 – does a perfect leapfrog jump across the crouching policeman's back. All while being extremely hungover and wearing tight leather trousers. 

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the time to celebrate this crowning athletic achievement.

_"Halt! Stehenbleiben!"_

There are footsteps resounding behind him as he runs across Skalitzer Straße. Two or more cops (he doesn't dare to look around for fear of slowing down) are following him, yelling at him to stop.

Blixa tries to increase his speed, already gasping for air. He turns right, hoping he might lose his pursuers somewhere in the smaller streets and alleyways of Kreuzberg 36.

The noises of the protest are now mixed with police sirens. The chanting has been replaced with angry shouting – and is that the sound of broken glass? The smack of fists or police batons against skin? Blixa is glad he escaped – for now.

He sprints along Manteuffelstraße, zigzagging around slouching students and Turkish mothers with prams and shopping bags.

At least one of the _bullen_ is still behind him. Blixa takes a sharp turn left into Naunynstraße with its towering 19th century buildings and prays he doesn't encounter more cops closing in from the other end of the street.

_"Stehenbleiben!"_

Naunynstraße seems to stretch for miles. Blixa gasps, knowing he can't keep up this pace much longer. The industrial rubber boots he's wearing aren't made for running (or even walking longer distances) and are chafing with each step. There's a sharp pain shooting through his side, making it increasingly hard to breathe. 

At the crossing, he turns right into Mariannenstraße with the vague hope of hiding in the park that surrounds the former Bethanien hospital.

Fuck. Blue lights are flashing behind the trees to the right. The cops are probably already at the Rauch-Haus. If Blixa looks for help in the old squatters’ building he'd walk straight into a trap.

His breath is wheezing high in his chest he follows Waldemarstraße. He can still hear the cop behind him, even if the footsteps seem farther away now. But still not far enough. 

Blixa turns left into Adalbertstraße, knowing he's running in circles as he turns left again, into Oranienstraße. His only hope is the maze of small interconnected backyards branching off from the busy main street. He might be able to shake off the cops in there. But he could just as well end up in a dead end.

And there's still no trace of Nick.

[…]

The distinct _tatütata_ of police sirens ringing in his ears, Blixa turns into the first open doorway he sees, exchanging the traffic and bright sunlight on Oranienstraße for the cool twilight of the gateway and then the calm grey stillness of the _hinterhof._11

He almost sobs with relief when he realizes the backyard isn't a dead end but seems to lead into one of the famous sprawling Kreuzberg yard systems instead. There's a stack of rusty bicycles, a sick-looking tree, a workshop and a large rear house with a doorway that leads to another yard beyond.

The cop’s footsteps resound loudly behind him, amplified by the echo of the high walls of the old buildings surrounding the yard.

Panting, Blixa crosses the doorway and enters the second yard. By now, his pursuer is less than ten, twenty meters away.

_"Schluss mit den Spielchen, jetzt bleiben se gefälligst stehen!"_12  
He doesn't sound out of breath at all.

There! Another doorway to the left, a small gate opening under the side wing of the sprawling _mietskaserne_13. Blixa turns around sharply, almost jumping into the shadowing entrance. Maybe, just maybe the cop hasn't seen him turn and thinks he took the bigger gate straight ahead, the one that leads to the third backyard.

Blixa doesn't take the time to test this theory but charges on, through a long tunnel-like passage full of trash cans and abandoned pieces of furniture until he reaches a large, two-winged door that's slightly ajar.

He pushes the door open, his arms shaky, his hands slippery with sweat, and finds himself on a sun-drenched alleyway he's never seen before. This isn't Mariannenstraße, which should be the next crossroad from all he knows about Kreuzberg geography. Well, never mind, he's not out of danger – Are there still footsteps echoing behind him?

Turning right, Blixa mobilizes the very last sparks of energy his body has to offer in order to run northwards, desperately looking for a crossroad, a doorway, someplace, anything to hide.

He almost trips across his own feet when he spots the shop front with the snake on the window.

"_A. J. Krowlinsky – Musikinstrumente._"

"_What the hell....?_"

He's half a kilometre away from Kotti and he's absolutely sure this wasn't where he bought his guitar.

Still, the shop's entrance is set in a deep doorway that seems good for hiding and Blixa doesn't have time to think.

He turns left and jumps into the doorway, sweaty fingers fumbling frantically with the handle before he stumbles into the semi-darkness of the shop.

A bell chimes. And then the sight hits him like a blow on the head: standing in the centre of the room in front of the Velvet Underground print, panting with exhaustion – is Nick.

[…]

It can't be possible.

For a second, Blixa thinks he's going to black out.

He gasps for air and stares while his heartbeat is pounding through his head like one of Unruh's overambitious percussion pieces and darkness is creeping in from the edges of his vision.

"Nick!"

It's really him – not a fata morgana or a delusion of Blixa's over-strained mind.

"Blixa! I... I thought you were..."

Blixa doesn't leave him time to finish his sentence. He steps forward, legs still shaking, sweat boiling under the tight confinement of his leather clothes. Then he grabs Nick by the shoulders like a drowning man grasping for a life belt.

"_Nick._"

Huge, grey-blue eyes staring at him from under melancholic lids. Crow-black hair, pale skin: a self-styled _poète maudit_ lost in the wrong century – the yin to Blixa's yang, his musical partner in crime, his alter ego...

Blixa stops thinking and kisses him.

Nick freezes, but only for a second. Then he yields into the kiss, his lips opening as he welcomes Blixa's tongue. It's not an innocent kiss. It can neither be excused by spur of the moment exaggeration, nor as a physical manifestation of "thank god you're alive" relief. They both know they are long past this. It's a scary kiss, a burning, desperate act of carnal communion. This is different from Blixa’s drunken party escapades – he's still laughing at those snaps someone took of him with Wolfgang a few years ago – this is _dangerous_.

Nick wraps his arms around Blixa's shoulders, pulling him into an embrace so tight his fingers might leave bruises on Blixa's shoulder blades even through the leather of his jacket. Blixa moans as he grinds his hips against Nick's, feeling a heat and hardness he dreads but at the same time desperately longs for.

It's Nick who pulls back, only to kiss again. Slower this time, deeper. Their lips are brushing against each other, tender now, a soft exploration rather than a brutal conquering.

As long as Blixa is kissing Nick, he doesn't need to think. He dives in again, tasting sweat and cigarettes and the echo of cheap wine in Nick's mouth and it's the best and most beautiful thing in the whole fucking world.

[…]

The shopkeeper announces his presence with a polite cough.

"I hate to disturb you, but it's probably a good idea to come through to the back room now." 

The shopkeeper – wearing a different suit now, but still hiding his eyes behind an extravagant pair of black shades – points towards a narrow door next to the counter.

They jump apart as if someone had sent electric jolts through their bodies.

"I... We... we don't...," Nick stammers. 

His once carefully quiffed hair is a dishevelled, sweaty ruin with random strands sticking out in the back where Blixa grabbed his head to pull him closer. His lips are red and swollen from kissing; he's a mess. A beautiful mess and that's the fucking problem.

"_Erde an Blixa. Lass den Unsinn. Lass es einfach._"14

Blixa bites his lip, clenches his fists, and tries to focus on what's going on besides Nick's far-too tempting presence.

"What?"

From behind his sunglasses, the shopkeeper's expression is unreadable. He seems to be amused, judging from the slight twitch at the edge of his mouth. But at the same time, he's talking to Blixa very slowly but somewhat impatiently, like he's speaking to an idiot animal which has just learned to communicate in human terms.

"The back room. Now." He gestures towards the door once again. "You don't want to be in here in a minute, I promise."

"_Was zur Hölle...?"_15

"Just so we understand each other correctly – _I want to help you._ Now don't look at me like that! I really do!" 

The shopkeeper waves both hands like he's shooing a flock of soft, tiny animals instead of two drugged-out and extremely confused rock musicians. 

"Now would you _please_ go to the back room and close the door?"

"Just go!" Nick seems to be faster on the uptake. He grabs Blixa's arm and pulls him towards the back of the room.

They've barely got in there, when they hear the bell chiming at the front door. Someone is entering the shop.

Standing in the small dark back room with the door closed, surrounding by nondescript crates and boxes, Blixa brings his ear toward the door to find out what's going on in the shop. He can feel Nick's presence closely behind him. They are not even touching, but the warmth of his body is enough to make Blixa painfully aware of the fact that they are stuck in a very confined space and that they were kissing just moments ago.

"Good day, how can I help you?" The shopkeeper's voice rings through the door. "Are you interested in vintage instruments?"

"_Lassen se mal. Ich suche einen Verdächtigen – haben Sie vielleicht was gesehen?"_16  


Blixa holds his breath. 

_Fuck._

[…]

The cop inquires about "a delinquent with a punker haircut”, but true to his promise, the shopkeeper insists he hasn't seen anything. Then the little bell at the entrance chimes again and the cop leaves the shop to pursue his search somewhere else. Blixa feels like a large weight has been taken off him. Behind him, he hears Nick sighing with relief. 

When the shopkeeper opens the door and lets them out, Blixa's legs are shaking with exhaustion. The sleepless night and the mad sprint through the Kreuzberg streets are taking their toll.

"_D... danke_," he stammers. "Thank you so much!" 

The shopkeeper smiles and once again, Blixa feels like there's something unnervingly wrong with his pointy face and the way his eyes are always hidden by dark glasses. 

"It was my pleasure!" He pats Blixa on the shoulder. "And by the way, how is the guitar doing? I hope you're giving her a good home?"

"You... you know him?" Nick asks in the background, flabbergasted.

"I bought the Mustang here," Blixa replies, before he addresses the shopkeeper again. "It does quite a good job. Much more... variable than I expected."

"I knew it would do you good. You looked like someone who can appreciate a decent guitar, especially one bought at a crossroad."

The shopkeeper turns towards Nick, who is staring at him, wide-eyed and shocked like he is the devil incarnate. 

"Don't worry my dear, it's not cursed. That’s a popular misconception, you know? It wasn't me who made the deal with Mr. Johnson. He got his from a colleague of mine, who was a bit ...rash in his decision making."

Blixa has no idea what the shopkeeper is talking about, but it’s nowhere near as important as the dire need to get out of here. He's so tired he can't guarantee he'll be able to remain on his feet for much longer.

"That's all very interesting,” he manages. “And we're very thankful - both, for the guitar and for helping us out here!" 

Looking around the shop, he spots a pinboard with various faded concert flyers. "Maybe you want to come to our concert? Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – he's Nick Cave, by the way,” he points towards Nick who still looks worried. "We're playing at the _Loft_ next month."

"Oh, thanks for the invitation!" Once again, the shopkeeper smiles like the cat who got the cream. "I might bring a friend if that's alright with you?"

[...]

Much to Blixa’s relief, they don’t talk much on the way home.

The kiss is … nothing he’s able to deal with in his current state of mind. And he isn’t sure he wants to think about it once he’s awake and sober, either.

"Have you seen that bloke’s _feet_?" Nick asks after a while. "And his eyes? I could see behind his sunglasses from the side and his _eyes_... How could you invite someone like that to our concert?"

"No, I haven't seen anything," Blixa retorts sharply. "I just want to go home and sleep!" 

"_And not think about anything_," he adds in his head. Just sleep. And forget everything that happened today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1"Hey, back there! Drop the bottle instantly!" [return to text]
> 
> 2Bullenschweine - "cop pigs". "Bullen" ("bulls") being the general derogatory slang term for cops[return to text]
> 
> 3"Drop that bottle now!"[return to text]
> 
> 4Behörde - (local or gouvernment) office[return to text]
> 
> 5"Mr. Emmerich, if you can't prove earnings from this kind of occupation you cannot legally call yourself a "musician"[return to text]
> 
> 6"ID, please!"[return to text]
> 
> 7"You, over there - come here!"[return to text]
> 
> 8"Hey! Stop!"[return to text]
> 
> 9"You there, with the punk haircut! Come here!"[return to text]
> 
> 10Bundesjugendspiele - mandatory annual sports competition generations of German pupils had to suffer through at school. A "teilnahmeurkunde" is what you get when you took part, but didn't perform particularly well. I have no idea how well young Blixa did at bundesjugendspiele, but the gag was too good to let it slide - and the BJS did exist even in the 70s, I looked it up. [return to text]
> 
> 11Hinterhof - backyard (particularly the maze-like, interconnected ones from 19th century urban architecture in German cities[return to text]
> 
> 12"Stop the games and stand still!"[return to text]
> 
> 13Mietskaserne - 19th century blocks of flats with small businesses and workshops on the ground floor and in the backyards[return to text]
> 
> 14"Earth to Blixa - quit the nonsense, just stop it!"[return to text]
> 
> 15"What the hell...?"[return to text]
> 
> 16"No thanks. I'm looking for a suspect - have you seen something?"[return to text]
> 
> 17"What the hell...?"[return to text]


	9. Der Himmel über Berlin

They're playing the _Loft_, the small venue under the roof of the famous _Metropol_ at Nollendorfplatz. It’s the first Berlin concert for the newly-formed Bad Seeds and to say that Nick is nervous would be an understatement. Today, they're facing the judgement of the Berlin scene. After waiting for months to finally witness the infamous, endlessly-talked-about project live on stage, their friends and acquaintances expect the best of both worlds, Neubauten and The Birthday Party, distilled into one band.

On the one hand, Nick can't wait to finally show what he's capable of when he's working with Blixa and Mick. They’ll also be joined by new members Hugo Race on guitar and Barry Adamson on bass. On the other hand… Despite the messy end of The Birthday Party, it still feels weird, having neither Rowland nor Tracy accompany him on stage.

The first attendees are trickling into the auditorium. There are the usual suspects – Nick spots Christoph, Mark Reeder, Wolfgang, Gudrun and the Malaria! girls. There’s Mufti, Unruh, Alex and Christiane and even the gang of Andis from Düsseldorf. But there are also lots of unfamiliar faces: new wavers with fishnet tights and big hair, black-clad girls in Joy Division T-shirts, students, squatters and punks, chatting and chugging beer as they wait for the show to begin. 

Meanwhile the members of the Bad Seeds (they had agreed unanimously that "Nick Cave and the Cavemen" wasn't that great an idea after all) are sweating backstage, clinging to cigarettes and beer bottles. Things are going to get very serious very soon.

Nick fishes the last cigarette from his pack of Marlboros and kicks the crumbled packaging away. He scans the room, idly observing his bandmates. He smiles when he looks at Mick, who is air-drumming nonchalantly with his palms on his thighs even if he seems a little pale around the nose. Nick is glad to have him at his side: if Mick's there, things can't get too bad. Even through the bedlam of the final Birthday Party gigs, his old mate always provided a sense of stability.

And then there's Blixa.

He's lounging in a chair, hiding behind a cloud of cigarette smoke and doesn’t seem affected by the tension accumulating around him. For once he has exchanged his Mad Max-style leather outfit against a less apocalyptic combination of black shirt and leather trousers to go with Nick's aesthetic vision for the Bad Seeds as a group of slightly psychopathic gothic dandies.

Nicks tries not to stare too obviously. It's been almost a month since the kiss and they haven't lost a word about it. 

Even if Nick catches Blixa's stolen glances from time to time, they've been limiting their interaction strictly to music. There's been endless hours of rehearsal with the two of them standing at opposite ends of the small cellar room, glad to have Mick and the new guys between them.

They had heated discussion about the best place to record the album – Blixa is set on Hansa Studios while Nick leans towards London – but every conversation has been about the band. It's as if the mad day with the protest, the wild chase through Kreuzberg and... and the other incident... hasn't happened.

It's torture. Nick does his best to distract himself – which works during the day. But his nights are filled with troubled dreams from which he wakes covered in sweat with hardness between his legs and Blixa's name on his lips. 

The drugs are granting him a few hours of artificial comfort. It's the only thing that helps him to contain the ... problem. But after the effect has worn off, the feelings return with renewed intensity. Nick is not sure how much longer he'll be able to bear it.

Today, however, belongs to music. The city of West-Berlin will face Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the first time and Nick will do everything in his power to make the encounter worth it.

[…]

The lights are blazing, the crowd is cheering and the familiar magic of guitar, bass and drums embraces Nick as he steps out onto the stage.

“We’re Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and I’m going to tell you about a girl...”

“From Her to Eternity” is over before he even realizes it. Nick has gotten carried away by the same dionysian rush he remembers from the Birthday Party, but it feels different this time, more refined. The music is still a wild beast he’s holding on to for dear life, but he's riding the animal now. It’s a steed carrying him towards a goal instead of a snarling demon ready to kill him the very moment he lowers his guard.

And now that the adrenaline rush of the first few songs is over and the crowd is applauding enthusiastically, Nick finally dares to pay attention to Blixa. 

Well... he shouldn't have done that.

Blixa is standing on the right side of the stage, a tall figure in black, crowned by a crest of spiky dark-blond hair. Even if it’s not him who plays the main riff, it’s the noises and screams from Blixa’s guitar that provide the Bad Seeds’ songs with the magic touch that sets them apart from the myriad of bands that grew in the wake of post punk and the London/Manchester scene.

_Blixa..._

Nick only catches a short glimpse at him before he has to head into the first stanza of the “I Put A Spell on You” cover. But that’s enough. All the memories have returned with full force.

Suddenly, all he can think about is how _close_ their bodies were when they kissed. How the moment continued into restless dreams the night after. The way Blixa’s expressive profile with the sharp nose and mad hair makes him look part beast, part elfin prince. A creature not wholly of this world, who has claimed Nick's heart and soul. 

Naturally, Nick fucks up his cue for the next song, the gut wrenching-scream at the start of “Mutiny in Heaven” which earns him angry glances from Mick. 

Oh yes, he knows this is bad. He has stopped being wholly present on stage minutes ago. He is singing the song, but not _living_ it. The wild visceral energy that carried him through the bone-breaking intensity of the Birthday Party gigs has evaporated they very moment Blixa entered his mind.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck..._

Blixa's guitar is shrieking like a strangled animal and now he's turning his head and looking at Nick _and is he smiling_? Fuck.

The instrumental break is over and Nick has to focus. _Focus_...

Apparently, the audience doesn’t mind the botched piece. The next song is “Cabin Fever” and most of them are benevolently nodding along to the bass line. They have been clapping at the right parts and cheering in between the songs. Lots of happy, enthusiastic faces, lots of beer bottles, only few crossed arms and "I'm a critic for _Spex_” frowns. But it might tip over any moment if Nick manages to fuck up another song. 

It's "Saint Huck" now – they first piece he ever played to Blixa. Has it really been less than a year ago? 

The guitars set in, a steamboat rolling through the rising floods of the Mississippi – a river Nick has never seen in person, but he knew right from the start what it's supposed to sound like in a song.

"_Born of the river / Born of its ever-changing, never-changing murky water ..._"

Grey waters, grey, low-hanging skies looming above the roofs of a city surrounded by swamp. Flickering gas lights, red-lipped whores, colonial decay. Nick closes his eyes and lets the images play out in his mind as the story washes over him. The only aspect of Blixa's presence he allows himself to witness is the guitar as it accentuates the story with wails and clashes of metallic precision. 

It's the music. As long as they connect only through the music, everything works just fine.

When he returns to the reality of the stage, the song is over and the crowd is cheering loudly enough to drown out the final throes of guitar feedback.

There's an arm around Nick's shoulders, Blixa has stepped up to him. His eyes gleam in the spotlight and his German accent is more pronounced than ever, a sure sign of his excitement as he yells into Nick's ear.

"_Das war irre!_ They love it! This was great!"

And then he smiles at Nick, one of his rare bright, unselfconscious toothy smiles, and for a second, everything is perfect.

[...]

"He would have such a nice voice if he just stopped that awful screaming!" Somewhere in the back of the audience Aziraphale rubs his ear and frowns. "And I still don't understand what's going on with that guitar!"

Crowley laughs. "Don't worry, this is the last encore. You’ve almost survived it!"

They watch the singer trembling, filled with the energy of the pulsing guitars, arms and legs flailing as he moves across the stage, as if his long limbs might come loose any second.

"Do you remember the 14th century?" Crowley asks. "He looks like a man possessed by the devil." He laughs. "It‘s good to see they're not ending up at the stake anymore."

"I just hope he doesn't hurt himself doing ...that." 

Aziraphale gestures towards the stage where the singer is now whipping his head back and forth in the increasingly brutal rhythm of bass and guitar, black hair flying, his forehead always avoiding the microphone stand by a hair's breadth.

"It would sound lovely if he did a nice folk ballad for a change," the angel sighs.

His companion shrugs and adjusts his sunglasses. "If he ever did one, it'd be a murder ballad." He grins. "And you know, that would be a win for our side!"

"Are you sure? From what I know his fate is still undecided. It's been hanging in the balance since we saved him from the gutter." 

Aziraphale has had time to get used to the thought of how much they disobeyed the rules since they saved the singer from certain death in the Kreuzberg back alley. So he speaks his next words with surprising confidence.

"Right now, he's neither on our side nor on yours. But there's one thing that's certain. He belongs to _him_."

They're both looking on as the singer approaches the German guitarist. How his flailing becomes considerably more controlled once he is standing next to him. How he arches his back into the final stanza of the song, closes his eyes as he rests his head on the guitarist's shoulder before he withdraws and rushes across the stage towards the other side. A manic whirlwind of howling vocals, raven-black hair and a flowy white poet’s shirt. 

"Do you think they'll ever get it together? We helped them so much and still..." 

Crowley makes a vague gesture that might have turned into a demonic sigil of power if only he had bothered enough. With most of his attention focussed on the stage, his vexation doesn't cause a lot of harm. Still, the demonic energy is enough to make the beer of most bystanders turn stale and tear a run into the stockings of the goth girl standing in front of him. 

Aziraphale's eyes are still focussed on the stage. He notices the way the guitarist turns his head to follow the singer's movements when he thinks nobody's paying attention. 

"Just show a little patience, my dear."

"Well, considering recent events I'm not that optimistic," Crowley says. "They kissed and still they can't bring themselves to act on it? We're running out of options here!"

Aziraphale turns around and smiles. Even in the dim strobe light of the club his face seems to light up like it's been caressed by warm sunlight. 

"Free will, remember? I think our part here is done. They'll figure out the last bit themselves."

"Fine." Crowley's frown smoothes. "But only because I can't help but trust you, angel – you and your incurable optimism."

Aziraphale beatific smiles turns even brighter. The band finishes the final song and the surging applause drowns out every other word. So Aziraphale doesn't reply but takes Crowley's arm instead. 

Together, they leave the auditorium and vanish into the starlit night.

[...]

After the show they are having a party. It starts in the cramped backstage rooms of _Loft_, but soon moves onwards to Kreuzberg into the spacious fifth floor _altbauwohnung_ of some friend of a friend of Mark Reeder. 

"They" is the Bad Seeds, most members of Neubauten, Christoph, Wolfgang, Mark, Gudrun and company as well as a dozen people Nick has never seen, but who all insist they know him from somewhere - _Risiko_, _Dschungel_ or even earlier, random acquaintances from somewhere in London or Melbourne.

He doesn't mind, he's still high on adrenaline from the stage – not to mention the lines they all did on the toilet backstage – and for once he enjoys the attention, the drinks and the girls who ask him for his address or phone number. 

Taking another sip from the glass of strong jack and coke someone put into his hand, Nick sinks back into the sofa that stands like a fortress in the centre of the crowded living room. Contrary to the improvised shared flats and squatted houses most of his Berlin friends are dwelling in, this place has actual furniture – stylish metal chairs and black leather sofas for once not scavenged from the _sperrmüll_. Nick takes a deep breath and lets his glance trail upwards, towards the stuccoed, impossibly high ceiling. Somewhere in the background, someone put on a Bowie record.

"_Though nothing, nothing will keep us together/  
We can beat them, forever and ever/  
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day_"

Nick lights another cigarette. For the first time in what feels like weeks, he is content to just rest in the moment. It's over. They did it. They played their first Berlin concert without major catastrophes. 

Someone slumps down next to him on the sofa. Blixa.

For a second, Nick's whole body tenses up. There's not much space on the sofa. With Mick on his right they're sitting tightly packed, with the whole length of Blixa's thigh being pressed against Nick's. He feels the warmth of Blixa's skin through the fabric of his trousers, not sure if he should withdraw, get up and leave or lean in closer. 

Blixa seems relaxed, even happy, as he downs the remainder of his vodka-o and lights a cigarette.

"How are you?" asks Nick. 

They haven't spoken much since the party has started. Most of the time Blixa has been occupied with his Neubauten bandmates – especially Alex, who seemed to have a _lot_ of enthusiastic input regarding Blixa's guitar work.

Blixa turns his head to reply. He doesn't even get to open his mouth before their eyes meet and they both pause mid-motion. 

Nick holds his breath as he loses himself in the sight of Blixa's face: huge blue eyes rendered even bigger and brighter by the smudged eyeliner he put on for the stage, pale skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, soft lips Nick remembers only too well... _Fuck_. It's like he's drawn towards him by magnetic force, it's impossible _not_ to move towards him, not to lean in, not to...

Blixa smiles and the spell is broken. 

"_Geile Party_! Did you see the other rooms? I can't believe someone owns a place like this in the middle of Kreuzberg 36!"

It's probably best if Nick just nods and smiles. Keeping the interaction short, before it gets awkward again. He should get up, find someone else to talk to and only speak to Blixa again once they find themself in the safe, familiar structures of the rehearsal room.

But he doesn't. He remains seated and accepts the fresh drink Christoph presses into his hand as he passes by. He sinks a little deeper into the sofa, his shoulder resting against Blixa's right arm. He smiles and sips his drink, enjoying the little movements of Blixa's body as he talks agitatedly to Mick about something he read in a collection of Chinese parables and how he intends to use it for a song.

Nick doesn't even move when Blixa puts his arm on the backrest: a shadow of an embrace, his right hand only centimetres away from Nick's shoulder.

Another drink and the last drops of tension have been rinsed from Nick's body. He leans back and discovers that Blixa's hand has been moving forward just the tiniest bit until it rests on his shoulder, a warm steady presence. 

Around them, the party moves on. Someone has cranked up the music and people start to dance. Nobody pays attention to the way Nick is nestled into Blixa's embrace or the way Blixa's thumb is stroking idly across Nick's collarbone – a fact that has made him hold his breath and raises goose bumps all over his body. 

[…]

Side A of the Bowie album ends and nobody bothers to put on the experimental side B. Time has turned slippery and unreliable as the murmur of the party amplifies into a roar.

Mick has long since left the sofa and joined the crowd in the kitchen, who, according to the sounds that emanate from there, are currently taking apart the furniture. Mufti, Alex and some guys Nick doesn't know are dancing wildly (someone put on an awful German punk rock record that reeks of the Düsseldorf Andis), their movements frantic and their pupils dilated in a way that indicates that there isn't just alcohol involved. 

The other guests are getting wasted in some way or the other. There's a half-naked couple snogging on the other sofa and more than one person has already passed out in the corner. Someone yells from the corridor they're going to get more vodka from the kiosk. Two girls are sharing a line of coke on the glass surface of the coffee table. Nothing out of the usual, a Berlin party not unlike the others Nick has attended since he arrived in the city – but still, today everything is fundamentally different. 

Nick doesn't even have to turn his head to look at Blixa. It's enough to close his eyes and feel. The warmth of Blixa's body against his, the touch of his fingers, the smell of cigarettes, hairspray and sweat – and, despite the change of clothes, still a sharp tinge of rubber and metal and leather – the sheer _closeness_. 

He even thinks he can feel Blixa's heartbeat through his chest, frantic like a fluttering bird – the fast pulse such a counterpoint to Blixa's extravagant appearance and stoic demeanour. Is it the effect of speed or just nerves? Nick doesn't care. Just feeling it it makes him feel alive and connected in a way he never thought possible. 

Neither him nor Blixa have spoken since they ended up in his position – as if they are both afraid that a single word might destroy the magic of the moment.

He doesn't know how long they have been sitting like this but Blixa doesn't show any intentions of going anywhere. Slowly, Nick allows himself to relax. 

[...]

Sunrise finds them on the roof top. 

Most of the guests had already left when someone mentioned the large attic and the ladder through which you could access the roof of the building and watch the sunrise. Is there a better way to conclude the party?

After everybody else went upstairs, even Nick and Blixa manage to disentangle themselves from their position on the couch. Nick isn't sure how long they had been sitting here – and if he hasn't fallen asleep in between. Time seems to be moving very fast and very slow at once. 

And now the night has taken its course and Nick and Blixa are the only ones left outside. Even the most persistent partygoers have withdrawn into the house where they probably crashed somewhere in the flat or headed straight home. But the two of them are still sitting outside, perched somewhat precariously on the roof with their backs propped against a large brick chimney. 

Far away in the East, the sky has turned red. 

"Rise in the East, the East is red..." Blixa seems to be speaking more to himself than to Nick.

"Hm? What does that mean?"

“It’s from a song for the next album. Last Beast in the Sky it's called. _Letztes Biest am Himmel_."

He hums a few notes. 

"That sounds unusually poetic for you."

Blixa smiles. “Your fault, I guess. Wait until you'll listen to it. It has an actual _melody_."

"Don't tell me you're going soft!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do with Neubauten after _Zeichnungen_? There's not really a way to sound more destructive than that." 

Blixa shrugs - and is he blushing? 

"So I might have taken some inspiration from the Bad Seeds. Melodies. Songs structure. A bit of beauty, you know?"

Nick doesn't know why he finds this admission so incredibly endearing.

Slowly, the glowing disk of the morning sun creeps across the horizon.

"Have you ever been there?" Nick asks after a while. "On the other side?"

He looks towards the TV tower, its metal globe and spire such a familiar sight on the West-Berlin horizon. But it remains a building behind the Wall, as distant to them as an alien planet in the night sky. 

Blixa shrugs. "As a kid with my parents. But not since then."

"Why not? I mean, isn't it strange to live in a city where you've never seen the other half?"

"I don't know. It's such a bother. You have to get paperwork done, exchange money and then you have one day there and need to return before midnight. It stinks and the houses are even greyer and more fucked-up than here. And they don't have good music. Just Karat and black-market Udo Lindenberg albums. It's awful."

He laughs a little and shrugs again before he turns towards Nick. 

"Besides, I have everything I need here."

He looks at Nick and the slight smile on his lips is also an invitation.

Nick doesn't reply. Not with words – he doesn't need to.

He leans in as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

Closing his eyes, he feels Blixa's hands on his face, pulling him closer. His fingers are warm and calloused on Nick's skin. 

Their lips meet and there's no danger, no panic and no desperation. This time, they know they have all the time in the world. 

They kiss as the sun rises and the sky over Berlin turns from red to gold.

"_And we kissed, as though nothing could fall  
(Nothing could fall)  
We can be heroes  
We can be heroes just for one day_"

the end-


End file.
